Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) shut down CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during an interview this week after she suggested that he was not qualified to make the judgment of whether transgender individuals are capable of serving in the U.S. military.
The exchange happened Monday night on “The Source” when Collins asked Crenshaw, who served in multiple combat deployments as a Navy SEAL: “Why would you be making that decision, and not a medical professional, or someone who makes those decisions about vision, or whatever issues they evaluate, before deploying somebody?”
“I’m saying, by definition, if you have transitioned into a different gender, you are not meeting our medical standards,” Crenshaw responded.
Collins responded, “But that’s your opinion.”
“No, it’s not an opinion,” Crenshaw fired back. “That is a pretty easy-to-prove fact. It makes it much harder on our units to deploy. Period. Like, full stop.”
When Collins asked how there were transgender soldiers in the U.S. military right now, Crenshaw responded: “There’s a difference between identifying — like, again, look, you could show up to your job, the next day, and say that your name is now, Ken. That’s different. You can identify that way. And that was Trump’s old policy, by the way. They would allow you to serve that way.”
“But there’s a very big difference between doing that, and actually undergoing medical procedures that take you out of service,” he continued. “And yes, you call it medical leave. But that’s some pretty severe medical leave. So, why would we allow that? And then you say that you’re deployable to austere environments? No way. That’s just not true.”
WATCH:
Kudos to @DanCrenshawTX for the SERIOUS pushback on @kaitlancollins on the issues of transgender individuals serving in the military. pic.twitter.com/UXCJ6Zfpyz
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) January 28, 2025
